Exceptional
by DolceBrio
Summary: It should've been simple, really. When you started out, they only gave you one rule: don't stand out. Unfortunately, I'd never been that great at following directions, and it's amazing how quickly the world can fall apart without them.
1. Chapter 1

-AN: I'm back! After a long hiatus, perhaps with a story I'll try to actually finish this time.

* * *

**[|] Exceptional [|]**

_It should've been simple, really. When you started out, they only gave you one rule: don't stand out._

* * *

( for whom the bell tolls )

The battlefield is still and frozen for a breathless minute after the starting bell rings out.

I curl my fingers over one of the six pokeballs linked onto my bracelet, uncertainly surveying the twenty-five of us that have been dropped at this arena. There were supposedly four different drop-sites, which meant a hundred trainers total.

Ninety-nine people would have to die.

I don't know what sets it off, a slight change in the breeze maybe, but a ripple of movement seems to pass through the twenty-five gathered here, and suddenly people are alive again. Adrenaline kicks in, filling our bodies with the urge to move, to run, to _survive_.

We all release our pokemon at approximately the same time, which in hindsight is a bad idea because it feels like a grenade going off. Each capsule opens with an explosive noise that sounds like a gunshot and the red light is absolutely blinding.

Deciding that it's better to run now blind than stick around and wait to be picked off by someone had the intuition to cover their ears and close their eyes, I take off into the forest behind us, screaming Icarus's name.

I can't hear my own screams, but I can feel my throat chafing in protest, and I can feel the vibrations in the ground as he lumbers after me, so it doesn't matter.

Suddenly, there's nothing solid beneath me, a warmth around my waist, and the wind rolling past my face. My body rejects the abrupt change in surrounding conditions and I retch pitifully.

Icarus makes an annoyed noise, bringing his snout close to flick my ear disapprovingly with his tongue, and I laugh through my fear.

The white spots eventually fade, and I realize there weren't actually as many clouds as I had thought. I look up, and the familiar red-scaled face of my charizard stares back down at me.

He noses at the hastily-made cloth bandage around his own arm and then snorts again.

I get the message. He hasn't quite forgiven me yet for the whole "digging into his arm with a knife" fiasco.

"It was necessary," I told him, while giving him apologetic scratches under the chin. This appeases him somewhat.

He growls something, the vocalization intended to carry meaning instead of his simple sounds earlier. I get the gist of it to mean that I should've explained it to him first, but I don't quite catch the literal words he uses because I'm distracted by a sight below us.

A fierce-looking, thick-furred arcanine is busy circling a smaller, velvet-white seel. Probably another victim of the "B-Button" fad, the strange moniker for a trend of not evolving pokemon that swept through Kanto.

The seel is no match for the much faster fire-type, who uses a combination of its agility and its physical attributes to batter the poor pokemon. To be fair, a dewgong wouldn't have fared much better. It's really the trainer's fault for choosing to send out a pokemon much less adapted to land than water, type advantage be damned.

Ruthlessly, the arcanine tears into its opponent's soft body, and the two pokemon gradually become closer in color.

I am saved from the guilt of bad-mouthing its trainer when I black out instead.

* * *

I remembered everything about the day I got my first pokemon.

It was a rainy day, which I thought was a bad omen until I actually burst through the doors of Professor Oak's laboratory, thoroughly soaked and leaving squishy wet footprints on the linoleum-tile floor, and saw the row of shiny red-and-white pokeballs sitting in a bed of plush blue velvet.

"I'm not late," I announced proudly, shrugging off my jacket to hand off to a research aid who looked eager to save the floor from my watery wrath. Suddenly, I regretted letting him take coat from me.

"You're the first one here," the professor said, dragging my attention away from my fantasy of being the overlord of the sea to him instead.

I puffed up with pride. "Can I see them first? Can I?"

A genial smile stuck itself resolutely on his face as he told me that I'd have to wait until everyone else got there. I made sure to squish around his building extra loud in retaliation.

Still, it'd been a good day. My brother had come home from his journey that day so I rushed back to my house right after getting my pokemon so he could tell me if my charmander was really strong. I thought he was. He looked really strong. But Andrew was an _expert_, he always bragged about it.

"He's pretty strong," Andrew, wincing as the red lizard chomped down on his fingers. "Did you name him yet?"

I silently congratulated my pokemon, imagining how big his teeth would be when he was fully grown. Andrew wouldn't have any fingers left, for sure. The thought made me giggle, and then I realized that he'd asked me a question. "Oh. No. Why? Do you know any good names?"

He ran a thoughtful hand through his light brown hair, which was a few shades lighter than my own. He called it "sun-streaked," I called him stupid. "I dunno...how about Icarus? He's supposed to be a boy whose dad makes him wings, except he flies too close to the sun and the wings melt and he dies."

I'd been thinking 'Smoky', or 'King-killer', or something in that vein, which were all cooler names than 'Icarus', but I lit up at his explanation. And plus, I'd be the only one with a mature pokemon nickname. "Okay. Well, Icarus is going to be so powerful that one day he'll fly close to the sun, and _it'll_ melt, and then when people think 'Icarus', they'll think about that story instead."

Andrew gave a pained smile. "Just don't get too strong, okay?" He looked at his own napping wartortle, which had been a wartortle for a long time now.

"Why not?" I asked, wrinkling my nose. Icarus—I'd started calling him Rus in my head—crowed in agreement, puffing out his chest.

He sighed and rolled his eyes, which he always did when he was about to tell me that I had to be a grown-up to understand. Like when he told me I couldn't tell mom that his girlfriend was sneaking in through the bathroom window. It'd looked uncomfortable, and I didn't understand why she didn't just come through the front door. Mom let me have sleepovers all the time.

"You don't need to, I mean you'll probably find something else you'll love doing even more than training." At the time, he was sure that I'd lose interest after a year, maybe two, tops. I was pretty sure, too. I knew lots of people dropped out quickly, and some of my older friends were already back home with a couple fresh pokemon they could keep as pets and playmates.

I huffed. "Fine. But I'm gonna be strong enough to beat you," I told him.

He smiled at that. "Okay, deal."

I looked at his wartortle curiously. The turtle looked back at me, and I stuck my tongue out at it. "How come you still have Reed? He's so _lazy_. Haven't you caught stronger pokemon?"

Andrew looked blank for a moment, unfocused, like he was trying to see something that was flickering underneath the surface, but it wouldn't stay still long enough for him to really see it. Then he shook his head and shrugged. "I don't know, everyone just does it, like it's taboo not to keep them on your team. Sentimental value, I guess?"

I nodded. And frowned. "What does taboo mean?"

Andrew sighed and rolled his eyes.

* * *

-AN: I'm having fun experimenting with writing styles, hope it's not confusing(:  
Feel free to send in some OCs, seeing as I have 99 other character slots to fill up. Just a caveat, I may or may not use them, and the main characters are pretty much set in my head, so your character might not have a large role so don't be disappointed.


	2. Chapter 2

-AN: Thanks for the lovely review(:  
Aaaand we march onwards.

* * *

**[|] Exceptional [|]**

* * *

( where do we go from here )

When I come to, my mouth is sour and dry, and the ground beneath me is rugged and tangible.

It's warm, oven-level warm. The furnace isn't just on; I'm inside of it.

I open my eyes, but the view doesn't change. It's still all darkness and emptiness and nothingness.

And then the feelings from the last time I was conscious come flooding back, so that my heartbeat races painfully and I have to fight with my lungs to get enough air in. I automatically assume the worst.

_I'm alone._

_I'm trapped._

_I'm dead._

That last thought makes me scrabble against my dark surroundings, trying to fill my nerves with sensations, searching for reassurance that I'm still alive.

The cocoon that I'm in shifts in response to my movement, and suddenly all I can see is bright white light. I squeeze my eyes shut aggressively until the red spots die out and my brief headache fades away.

Once I'm confident enough, I open my eyes incrementally to allow them to adjust to the new stimulus. I'm in a cave, I realize as I scope out the area, although I'm not very far from the mouth, probably to ensure a quick escape route should there be an attack from deeper within. The predominantly sand-colored rocks are striated with tendrils of red and white and grey, and past the jagged lip of the cliff this cave is perched upon, I can see the top edge of some body of water.

Making observations is comforting—concrete facts are predictable and _stagnant_—and the panic attack begins to subside. Unfortunately, as the adrenaline seeps out of my body, so does any facade of warmth that my biology had tried to maintain.

Something warm presses around me, a heavy appendage draping itself across my shaking shoulders. I flinch at the contact before recognizing Icarus's powerful form lying to my right.

His streamlined, serpentine face is both comforting and unnerving; I should have noticed him sooner, should've checked all of my surroundings before allowing myself to relax. He's a damn colossal dragon, a literal burning beacon. In my panic I'd had tunnel vision.

It's a rookie mistake. Being in this situation is unsettling, throwing me off in a time when I need most to stay perfectly balanced.

"How long was I out?" I ask him, trying to shrug his wing off.

_'Not long enough,'_ Icarus says dryly, and places his wing back in place with finality. _'Stop squirming.'_

He matches the glare I give him and I sigh. "Fine, then come with me. I wanna see where we are."

_'It's an island chain,'_ he recalls promptly, snorting out a plume of smoke.

A manic laugh bubbles in my chest. Of course they dumped us on the Sevii Islands. Backwater and isolated, there were probably a total of 1000 people living on all seven islands before they were cleared off. Arceus forbid that people on the mainland find out what really goes on outside of their gilded cage.

It's hard to choose whether or not to stay in the cave. On one hand, it provides a relative level of safety from the elements, and I'm fairly certain we can sustain ourselves by hunting nearby. If I'm lucky, I could wait for everyone to tire out their pokemon.

On the other, it makes us easy targets should we be surrounded; the cave's mouth had to be large enough to accommodate Icarus's wingspan, so it wouldn't act as much of a bottleneck.

A cursory check of my backpack reveals that most of the supplies I'd had when they grabbed me were still intact. Potions, pokeballs, status removers, food, a thermos of water in the side pocket, and a few human supplies: a notebook and pens, toiletries, a stack of hair ties. Digging around the zipped compartments, I even touch the cold edge of the knife I'd learned to always keep on hand and a packet of gum.

I have possibly the shittiest memory known to mankind so I can't quite tell if anything's missing, except for the glaringly obvious absences of my phone and my Pokedex.

Icarus shoves his nose against my neck, reminding me that we're on a clock.

In the end, I don't have to make the decision. A sudden rumbling in the back of the cave and the subsequent beginnings of a cave-in make it for us.

Someone screams for help as we take off from the rubble. There's something familiar about the voice, and I instinctively turn around. We haven't gotten far, and I can make out blonde hair and a black scarf standing above the cave, caught between the earthquake under his feet and the graveler advancing towards him. His pokemon yowls helplessly, equally paralyzed by the ground moving beneath it.

"_Wes!_" The scream tears itself from my throat before I realize what I've done.

The graveler and its trainer look up, and it immediately begins to lob chunks of rocks in our direction.

Icarus plummets.

* * *

"Wesley Chase Ellington!"

I looked up, not because it was my name being called, but rather because the shrill tone of the voice promised a spectacle, and I wanted to watch.

The voice was coming from one of the calling booths in the corner of the Viridian Pokemon Center, where a skinny, short blonde boy was talking to a skinny, tall blonde woman. He cringed beneath her withering stare. His name most certainly dwarfed his demeanor.

"How many times do I have to tell you to call?" she berated, twisting her wedding ring to alleviate some of her frustration.

The boy was trying to look everywhere except for directly at the screen, but he sat up straighter and brightened when a man in a crisp black suit came to stand next to her. I recognized them suddenly when I saw them together. Mom and Dad talked about them all the time, although Mom was more interested in the scandalous home-wrecking tramp who'd married a man twenty years older than her, and Dad thought the man was a Machiavellian corporate sonnuvabitch.

I didn't really know what those words meant, but I thought they looked nice in pictures together.

They didn't look all that nice together now. The man, Mr. Ellington of Ellington Industries, was scolding Mrs. Ellington with an ugly-looking scowl on his face. And when he turned back to the blonde boy with a smile that had far too few teeth to be real. He looked like one of those creepy clefable with the constant smiles on their faces while secretly they were planning on singing you to sleep. Except he wasn't pink. Or chubby. Or soft.

So the simile didn't actually fit that well, but whatever.

"Wesley, as much I wish your mother would remember her place and refrain from making such a public spectacle out of our family affairs," Mr. Ellington said, giving his wife another condescending frown, "she's right. How could you be so careless? We told you, you have to remember where you put your pokemon. This journey was supposed to teach you some responsibility."

Wesley squirmed in his seat and blurted, "I'm sorry dad! I promise I'll find him. I still have Jet, he can help!"

"See to it that you do," Mr. Ellington affirmed brusquely, and then terminated the call.

Wesley sighed, and I couldn't tell if he was disappointed or relieved that it was over.

I looked down to tell Icarus that we were leaving, only to spot him skulking across the floor towards Wesley. He'd just learned how to make an ember, and he seemed bent on practicing his new skill on the blonde boy's sneaker laces.

"Icarus," I hissed at him, trying to be subtle. "Ica_rus_."

He promptly ignored me, and then let out a squeal when Wesley noticed and tried to kick him away. "Dumb lizard."

Icarus was being stupid, but I couldn't help feeling a flash of defensiveness. He was _my _pokemon. Only _I _could make fun of him. What did _Wesley_ know anyways?

I rushed over and scooped up my charmander into my arms. And resisted the urge to kick Wesley in the shins.

"Get away from my pokemon you jerk," I snapped, trying to pet Icarus for dramatic effect. It was frustrating because he kept wriggling around, messing everything up. I sent him telepathic signals to stop moving and work with me, but they didn't reach him because he started to chew on my finger.

"Your pokemon started it," Wesley threw back, looking haughty.

He started to say something else, but his words floated over me; I was busy wondering how things would play out if I asked Icarus to set his hair on fire. We could roast marshmallows.

By the time I refocused my attention on him, he was done talking and now he looked uncomfortable at the fact that I was just kind of staring. "What, are you in love with me or something?"

I wrinkled my nose in disgust. "Yeah right. Boys are gross." It seemed like a more socially appropriate response than telling him that I was imagining him as a human campfire. "Don't be mean to Icarus. You're just jealous because you lost _yours_."

Wesley immediately shut up and looked down at his feet. It made me feel like something was pressing uncomfortably on my chest, so I amended, "Do you remember where you last saw it?"

He looked up warily, like he wasn't sure I actually wanted to help. "...I put her pokeball down when I was buying potions at the PokeMart. But I already looked there."

"I could help you look again," I offered, feeling the pressure start to disappear. It didn't really matter what he said; I was already planning my career as a cool private detective, with Icarus as my fire-breathing Watson. And it didn't really matter that he'd already tried retracing his steps; he definitely just missed something, and I was sure that I wouldn't make the same mistake.

"I guess," Wesley said with a shrug. He looked hesitant as he tacked on the end, "And I guess your charmander's not _that_ dumb."

With grace and poise, I accepted his apology.

0-0-0-0

"This sucks," I said, trying to use my fingernail to carve my initials into the bench we were sitting on.

The man at the PokeMart had kicked us out after we threw his entire stock of PokeBalls against the linoleum floor to make sure Wes hadn't mixed his in with them.

Wes nodded in agreement. He was watching dejectedly as his houndour, Jet, chased Icarus in circles around a tree trunk. "My parents are gonna be so mad."

"What was in it?" I asked.

"An eevee," he told me.

I blinked, impressed and a little jealous. "You have a lot of rare pokemon."

With a brief shake of his head, the blonde dismissed the comment. "Kaia's not that strong though," he confided with a touch of bitterness and a whine.

"Just evolve her," I suggested, dragging up my memories of the eeveelutions. That had pretty much been the only lesson I'd paid any attention to. "You could get a _Glaceon_."

A look of disgust passed over Wes's face. "Jolteon is so much cooler."

"Glaceon."

"Jolteon."

"Glaceon."

"Hey."

We both stared at each other for a moment, unsure of who'd just spoken. I touched my lips. Maybe I was possessed.

The voice repeated itself, and this time, we tipped our heads up to meet the eyes of a scruffy looking boy, who was probably two or three years older than us.

"Hi," I waved.

"Wanna battle?" he asked, tossing a pokeball up in the air and catching it.

Wes opened his mouth to agree, but I remembered what my brother had told me, and I cut in superciliously, "No. We're not stupid. You think you can just take our money cuz we're new."

The boy chuckled, but it didn't sound nice. It was like the sound my mother made when I told her I was going to be super rich and super famous one day. "Smart. But I promise, I'll only fight you both with this new pokemon I just got."

Wes and I looked at each other, and our two pokemon that had stopped their game to see what was going on. Two against one. Boy, I knew my brother was a liar: people did not get smarter as they got older. _Obviously_ we would win. Two is bigger than one!

"Okay, yeah," we agreed readily.

Jet sprang to Wes's side. Mimicking the little black puppy, Icarus prowled over to my feet on all fours, too. The boy pitched the pokeball he'd been playing with during our conversation, and wisps of red energy slowly dissipated around the pokemon that emerged.

"Vee?"

It would've been just a creepy coincidence that the boy had somehow managed to find an eevee on the outskirts of Viridian, but then the little brown fox ambled over to rub itself against Wes's ankles. Wes's face turned red until he looked like a smoochum.

"You stole my pokemon?"

"Oh, is it yours?" The boy shrugged. "Finders keepers."

Which, apparently, was not a motto that Jet or Icarus seemed to agree with, because Icarus gleefully ember'd the boy's sneakers and Jet snatched up the pokeball from where the boy had dropped it in order to shield his nose from the smell of burning rubber.

Forget being private detectives. Me and Icarus and Wes and Jet could so team up to be crime fighters.

* * *

-AN: sorry for the lateness of the update and the jumpiness of the chapter, setting up the background to a story is such a struggle.


	3. Chapter 3

-AN: Thanks for the review, YamiRuss! Reviews feed me c: This one's a long one, sar guise.

* * *

**[|] Exceptional [|]**

* * *

( what's god to a nonbeliever )

_"Wes!"_ The scream tears itself from my throat before I realize what I've done.

The graveler and its trainer look up, and it immediately begins to lob chunks of rocks in our direction.

Icarus plummets.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

It's always when we face an assertion of life's fragility that we are motivated to actions, the tenuous connection between ourselves and life, that are breathtakingly beautiful, and larger than life.

My and Icarus's awe-inspiring moment occurs as he cocoons us in his wings and plummets down towards the ocean like a lead weight in order to avoid the onslaught. I don't have time to comprehend what's happening, only the feeling that my stomach is dropping, and that the lake is a hell of a lot bluer at this angle, and that it's so so cold.

And then Icarus flares open his wings and suddenly we are cheating gravity, catching the surface of the water and sending it dancing upwards in a crystal mist. Boulders crash into the lake around us, tossing up jets of spray. Water soaks through my hair and my shirt, and the column of my neck as I tilt my head back to laugh.

Suspended in the air and this moment, it feels like everything is normal again. I am just a trainer, Icarus is just a pokemon, and there is no such thing as the end. The wind cavorts through my hair and the lake's native pokemon throw themselves in impossible arcs over us.

"Flamethrower!"

Icarus roars, his breath made of molten fire, and he exhales towards the tiny pebble of a graveler in the distance. The light of his own flames glints off his scales. In that moment, as he seems to be the manifestation of fire itself, it is not hard for me to see why the ancient civilizations once thought pokemon were gods.

We are wild, untamable, powerful. This is what our journey used to be full of, battles and moments like this; these are the thrills of training pokemon, the reason why veteran trainers can never seem to give it all up.

A rough cry tumbles down from the mountain, and Icarus snorts in triumph.

When we've made our way up once again, I can see that our flamethrower has scorched a path across the graveler's side.

It's not a large graveler, but the number of crags on its body and the unevenness of its stereotypically circular shape crown it as the victor of countless battles.

Its trainer is equally weathered, fine lines drawing tight the corners of his eyes. There's no grey in his red hair yet but I imagine it's not far off.

Wes's jolteon is pressing herself pitifully against the ground, one of her hind legs incongrous with the rest of her body. Her fur reflects her state; where it was once the color of the sun, it now mimics a sunset. Upon seeing Icarus, she lifts her head wearily in greeting.

I watch her for a moment, then say, "Sand attack, then steel wing."

Icarus beats his wings until they turn silver, simultaneously buffeting the graveler with gusts of grit.

The red-haired trainer tells his graveler, "Defense!"

Taking on its own iron sheen, the graveler braces itself for impact. Meanwhile, its arms rip out handfuls of rock from the mountain and begin hurling them in every direction. The attack is inaccurate and crude, because of the pokemon's conpromised vision, but ubiquitous.

There isn't enough room between the projectiles for Icarus to fly through—the graveler is fast, and a charizard is by no measure small.

I relay this to him and tell him to switch to flamethrower.

Feeling the change in temperature, the graveler orients himself accordingly, obstinately refusing to let up on its assault.

Which leaves its back open to a desperate shadow ball assault by Wes's jolteon.

"That's not fair," the red-haired trainer snaps. "This is a one-on-one battle."

He moves to draw another pokeball from his belt, to even his odds, but I am not ready for a full-out war, so I make a choice. I say, "Burn his hand."

The graveler is fast, but there is no way that he can move faster than Icarus can open his maw. With an unearthly scream, the trainer drops the pokeball and cradles his right hand.

It's not a bad burn; Icarus didn't put much heat into it, weak even for an ember, so it's a second-degree burn at worst. Still, it means he won't be able to use his hand for a while, and, more importantly, he won't be able to give chase.

I whistle for Icarus and grab Wes. The blonde hastily returns his jolteon and climbs on.

We soar away into the unrelenting blue sky.

"Long time no see," I say, looking Wes in the face for the first time.

He pulls me in by the small of my waist and kisses me.

I blink when he sits back. "I thought you hated me?"

"I don't know...just tired...and, I missed you," he mumbles, words slowing towards the end as he passes out against my back.

Laughing quietly, I run my fingers through his hair. The sunny strands are longer than I remember, though still on the short side. His face hasn't enough to become unrecognizable in the past year, however. It's still the face of the boy who used to be my best friend.

I've missed him, too.

* * *

I hated Viridian Forest.

It had no good qualities; no cute pokemon to catch, no air conditioning, _so_ many bug pokemon, and _no_ lights.

Mostly, I hated the bug pokemon because they were the reason there weren't any lights at night. The lady at the information desk said adding streetlights would "disturb the natural environment of the bug pokemon.

I did my daddy proud and asked her where my tax dollars were going.

In the end, she gave me a flashlight and told me that I should probably get moving. At first, Icarus wanted to hold it, but then he accidentally shined it in his eyes, and after that, he avoided it like it was a girl charmander.

Otherwise, though, we were having a great time—plenty of weedle and caterpie for Icarus to burn, and plenty of bug-catching kids to beat—until we got to a fork in the road.

"We're supposed to turn left here," Wes said, holding the map that they hand out for free at the information desk and rotating it around.

The sun was setting, so I held my flashlight a little tighter. Something rustled on our right, and there was a flash of silver. It was shiny! It had to be something cool, like an Articuno, or a _Lugia_. I couldn't tell Wes, because then he'd want to catch it, too, but then I just leave him either, because then I'd have to walk alone in the dark.

I poked Wes. "No, it definitely says to go right."

He stuck his tongue out at me and said confidently, "No way you can read maps better than me."

"Can too!" I snapped back, crossing my arms. Icarus mimicked my actions.

Wes furrowed his brow. "Fine. Then you go to the right, I'm going to the left."

"Bet I'll make it through faster than you," I teased, walking as quickly as I could to the right so I could get a head start.

Wes called after me: "Wait, but I get the flashlight!"

"What, why?" I asked defensively. Then, it hit me and I smirked. "Are you a scaredy meowth? Scared of the dark?"

"N-no," the blonde stammered, cheeks warming up. "It's just, you already have a charmander. He's practically a living flashlight. You're more of a scaredy meowth if you need _two_ flashlights!"

I threw the flashlight behind him so he'd have to run back to get it. As he hurried towards it, he called over his shoulder, "Arceus, you're so immature!"

"I'm so winning," I corrected him, laughing, and stuck my tongue out at him until I realized he couldn't see me. "And you shut up about Icarus!"

0-0-0

I shivered, trying to get closer to Icarus and his flame. Why did nighttime have to be so dark? Why did I split up with Wes again? If I was Arceus, I would've just made everything sunny. Except in the winter. In the winter, there'd just be no sun, so the snow would never melt!

Immersed in dreaming up my own world, I forgot about the fact that the shadows all looked like scary ghosts that wanted to eat my toes while I slept or criminals that wanted to sell my organs on the black market. I couldn't, however, ignore the sudden crashing noises deeper inside the forest.

We were camped for the night on the edge of the path that travelers were supposed to use to get through Viridian Forest, with a fire made from Icarus's ember and some dry sticks making enough smoke to keep the bug pokemon away. Everything was exactly like my brother had taught me. He said to stick to the path, because in the deep forest, there were beedrill who had enough poison to melt your insides, and ariados who wrapped you up in cocoons so they could eat you later.

I didn't really believe him about the ariados, because he also used to say things like 'don't use my computer without asking first because there are creepy guys on the internet who can hack into your computer's camera and spy on you'; and because I'd learned in school that ariados were found in Johto; but my dad told me it was true, people would bring them over either intentionally or accidentally when they traveled back and forth between Johto and Kanto, and somehow they ended up in Viridian Forest and became an invasive species.

Icarus looked really curious, though, and my brother always acted like such a know-it-all, so I decided to move away from the path and closer to the sounds. Mom and dad would so like me better when they heard that I'd adventured deep in the forest that my brother was too afraid to go into.

"Make your fire extra big though," I told Icarus, trying to mask my nervousness.

He gave me an amused look, but didn't miss the opportunity to show off.

I stamped out our campfire and we headed into the gloom. Leaves tickled my face as I passed by, making me shudder. I would've asked Icarus to burn them away, but I was afraid that the forest rangers had set up cameras to catch vandals.

The deep forest was too quiet, like I was wearing headphones, except for the crashing. I was almost glad for it, though, because it meant there was nothing around to sneak up on me. To occupy myself, I waved to the trees and pretended they were the audience at my pokemon battle against the Champion.

"_Charrr!_" Icarus yelped suddenly, leaping into my arms.

I petted his head a bit and squinted, trying to make out what Icarus saw, but all I could see was darkness and the shadowy outlines of trees. Stupid Wes, taking my flashlight. The lady had given _me_ the flashlight so I would go away, not him.

A flash of silver, and then total blackness, overcame my vision. I screamed, scrabbling at my face and whatever freaky bug pokemon had dropped on me. Icarus kicked at it, growling deep in his throat, and a thump next to my feet confirmed his accuracy.

"It's an aron," I noted in surprise, poking at the metal-plated pokemon.

Shaking its head, it looked up at me, eyes widening in terror. Icarus flexed his muscles, proud of the reaction. I smirked, thinking about how heroic and scary we looked, looming above it with the dark trees all around us.

Those dark trees crashed behind us. Icarus wailed, and I scooped him up again.

In the nest the fallen trees had made was an aggron, struggling to get back up. An arcanine and a nidoking skidded into the new clearing, the arcanine lighting up the entire forest with the fire blast it was charging in its muzzle.

The aggron attempted to counter it with protect, but the shimmery blue shield shattered under the force of the flames. I squeezed my eyes shut and stuck my fingers in my ears as it screeched in agony, and I tried to keep my senses shut down as the arcanine howled from the pain of a metal claw to its stomach, ripping open the soft skin.

Squealing its name with rage, the aron tried to back up its evolution by throwing itself headfirst against the nidoking's knee, but the colossal purple pokemon batted it back with its tail, and the aron crashed against another tree trunk.

Purple was my favorite color, it was supposed to be a nice color. Evil was supposed to wear black, or red, or grey, not purple.

Icarus and I had taken refuge under a bush, and we tried desperately not to make any noise as the nidoking used its horn to drill against the aggron's armor again and again. But then the aron was about to hurl its body against the nidoking again, and I saw the nidoking ready to tear into its tiny form, and suddenly I was out in the open, throwing a pokeball at the nidoking, which was the only way I could think of to get it to—_stop goring the aggron__ please!_

The pokeball bounced off of its purple hide, sucking up the aron instead, and I threw myself on top of the pokeball, crying for them to stop hurting each other and praying for my daddy to come pick me up, and the blood of the aggron and the arcanine was everywhere, soaking into my clothes until it bogged me down, and mingling with my snot and sweat and tears.

0-0-0-0

I woke up at 9:38 AM to white walls in Pewter City's Pokemon Center; it said so in the report that Officer Jenny wrote up about that night/morning. I'd been brought there after being rescued by a couple of rangers who had heard me screaming. The report also said that I'd been attacked by a horde of butterfree, and the onslaught of confusions they used had messed up my brain. I asked them to get rid of that part, because my brother would make fun of me for being crazy, but they said it had to be in there to be comprehensive.

In exchange, they agreed to my request that he be put in jail if he ever made fun of me again, but I think they were lying about that because people only get put in jail for things like murder and stealing.

I wasn't sure what to do next, so I sat in the Pokemon Center and found my backpack so I could change out of my hospital gown into my own clean clothes.

Wes came in at 11:50 AM, something I delighted in telling him.

"I beat you," I told him, showing him the bandages on my arm to prove that I'd been here for a long time already.

Then, I didn't know why, but I hugged him as tightly as I could. He let me stay there for a second before he shoved me away because cooties, and made fun of the tangles in my hair, and everything felt normal again.

Except for that second pokeball that had been sitting on top of my clean clothes.

* * *

-AN: I'm determined to make it past 4 chapters. My record's 18, but that's discouraging so I'm gonna hit 4 first and then we'll see from there.


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